The Grenfell Action Group is privileged to be able to support Ann-Marie Richardson, and our other neighbours on Silchester West Estate, by sharing Ann-Maries’s petition below. Silchester residents are facing the probable ordeal of having their homes and community destroyed so that a few spiv property developers can make a fast buck.

The monstrous over-development that has robbed Frinstead House of all it’s original green space and residential amenity is set to be replicated around Markland, Dixon and Whitstable Houses. All the beautiful trees and parkland will disappear. Residents will face battles to hold onto their tenancies under the RBKC Decant Policy and will be re-housed in homes the size of match-boxes if they are fortunate enough to negotiate a “right to return”.
Meanwhile, we have a bunch of cultural tourists from West Londion Citizens trying to help the Council to do their dirty work and persuade our working class communities to surrender long standing tenancies and leaseholds.

The Grenfell Action Group is proud to offer our solidarity to the residents of Silchester West and we urge our readers to sign the petition below. If RBKC and West London Citizens think we will surrender our way of life without a fight they are badly mistaken!

Stop demolishing our homes and forcing us out!

“For 25 years I have lived as part of a tight knit community on Waynflete Square, a social housing estate in Notting Hill. Kensington & Chelsea Council have just proposed plans which threaten not only my home but the homes of hundreds of other families who live in the area.

Kensington & Chelsea Council are planning to demolish a large portion of the social housing in the borough. In the process they are going to enforce compulsory purchases on the lease-holder properties whilst forcing the social housing tenants to leave their homes and relocate to other areas (potentially to places outside of the city they have been in their whole lives).

At present the majority of the homes in Waynflete Square, the area the council have proposed demolishing,are owned by ex tenants who have lived in the community for over 40 years. The rest are rented by secure tenants, many, like myself, who were born in the area, have lived and worked here all of our lives and have very strong family and social ties to the area.

The proposals put forward by Kensington and Chelsea will have a major negative impact on the social and cultural fabric of the community and the lives of the people who are being forced out of their homes!

This cynical move by Kensington and Chelsea Council is nothing more than social cleansing of the borough. It will line the pockets of many of those at the top end of the scale as they continue to sell off land to private developers and housing associations in order to fulfill David Cameron’s promise that people will be able to buy a housing association property!

Petitions and public pressure have stopped families, like those on the New Era Estate, from being made homeless in the past. I am sure that the same can happen here.

Please support me in calling on Kensington and Chelsea Council not to relocate us and demolish our homes. It is creating fear and distress amongst the whole of the community. The security of all our futures is at stake.”